I have long been a fan of this series and this author. This novel came out in the fall of 2016 and I remember picking it up just before Christmas at the Plano Library on the way home from cancer treatment with Sandi. She knew that a storyline involved her beloved New England Patriots and wanted to read it after I did. That was the plan, at least. Somewhere, the Fates laughed, but I never heard them.
2017
hit and within a couple of weeks my Mom had suddenly passed. The weeks passed
into months and by the summer Scott and I were packing up the apartment,
clearing out the house as best as we could, and coming back here to the home I
grew up in while Sandi was in the hospital and clearly slowly losing her battle.
Everything from the Plano library, including this book, went back to the
Haggard Branch on Coit Road.
It
was some time before I got us signed up at the Lochwood Branch which is a few
miles away from the house and on the land that used to hold the YMCA Branch
when I was kid. Though I had made a massive list of everything I had checked
out from the library, it somehow got lost in the move. With everything that had
happened by that point, and the fact that losing Sandi had pretty much wrecked
me, I forgot about this book. I did not think of it again util I saw it on a
shelf right before the pandemic hit and grabbed it up. It has been here ever
since and for one reason or another did not get read until just a couple of
days ago. As is came out several years ago, it seemed to be a good choice for
FFB today.
As The
Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva begins former newspaper
investigative reporter and current part time private investigator Liam Mulligan
gets a phone call from his boss, Bruce McCracken. They have a new client who is
not happy with the efforts of the Jamestown Police Department or the FBI.
Approximately, three weeks ago there was a robbery at The Pell Savings and
Trust and the branch manager, Mildred Carson, wants a meeting.
Mulligan
goes to the meeting and learns that early in September a wealthy customer came
in to access his safety deposit box. The assistant manager and the customer
went into the vault, opened the relevant box, and then were confronted at gun
point by someone. They were soon helpless, the jewelry gone, and the person was
gone with no one else in the bank aware of anything. Mulligan asks a lot of
questions and soon he has a couple of ideas though things are slowed down
because the wealthy customer does not want to cooperate.
Things
are also slowed down by the fact that somebody is going around killing local
pets. In limited detail that may upset some readers, it becomes clear that
somebody is setting pets, dogs specifically, on fire to kill them. Like the
recent events at the bank, local police have no clues or even a possible
suspect.
If that
is not enough, McCracken and Mulligan soon also have a major and potentially
lucrative client, the New England Patriots. As any football fan knows,
background checks and profiles of players about to be drafted in the NFL do not
show everything. Things get missed. The Patriots have a record of missing some
things in recent years and do not want to make that mistake again. There is an athlete
with ties to the area that the Patriots may move up in the draft to get if he
is as squeaky clean as he appears. Mulligan already knows for a fact that he
isn’t. The real question is, how dirty is he?
These
three main storylines and a couple of other ones eventually coalesce together
in The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva. Flashes of
humor, plenty of action, and multiple mysteries make the fifth book in the series
that started with Rogue Island another compelling and highly
entertaining read. As noted earlier, what happens to several dogs in this book
is horrific and may disturb some readers though it should also be pointed out
that the descriptions are not gratuitous or excessive. Those few situations are
handled very well by the author through Mulligan’s character and are not
glorifying of it in any way.
I have
been a fan of this series and The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by
Bruce DeSilva is highly recommended as is the series.
The books and my reviews in order:
Rogue
Island
(November 2010)
Cliff
Walk
(September 2012)
Providence
Rag (May
2014)
A
Scourge of Vipers
(May 2015)
The
Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel (You
Are Here)
The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel
Bruce DeSilva
A Forge Book (Tom Doherty
Associates, LLC)
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765374332
September 2016
ISBN# 978-0-7653-7433-2
Hardback (also available in audio
and eBook formats)
320 Pages
My reading copy came from the Downtown Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2021
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